The Korasa Trial: Original DISCONTINUED
by spruce56
Summary: My first attempt at a fanfic; set in the Old Republic Era. DISCONTINUED - see version 2.0 above.
1. Prologue

Star Wars: The Korasa Trial

_Prologue:_

"Why have you come back?" One asked, silhouetted against the frozen grey sky. The other, taller, darker somehow, stood silent and still, only the telltale fog of his breath to mark him as a living being. Regret and dismay hung heavy about him, met with chilly indifference. The emotions were there, he knew, but they were difficult to sense, muted by the strange icebound stone. The first man watched him and grimly turned away.

He reached the shadowy doorway, silver hair whipped across his face by the frigid wind. The other made no move to stop him, although he knew how easy it would be to kill this man, to destroy him utterly. That power was still within him, long unused, all too easily recalled. He felt it, forced himself to feel it, and drew some small measure of pride from the fact that he would not use it.

A muffled step broke through his reverie and he glanced up. A woman regarded him thoughtfully long hair falling over the tired child she carried. She looked tiny, framed against the wall; an unbroken metal face, save the single high doorway.

"The damage is long done, what else would you do here?" she asked wearily.

"Kisho," he acknowledged, the name returning to him. She studied him a moment longer and smiled sadly, begrudging the pity she felt for him. A lightsaber hung at her side, but with her arms full she had no way of reaching it fast enough. "You never were afraid of me," he said eventually, frowning at the memory.

"Why would I be? The Sith are such contemptible creatures, so wrapped in their own desires that they forget whatever it was they truly wanted,"

"I've changed somewhat, since then, you hadn't noticed? No, I don't suppose you would have," he amended.

"Or been changed," she agreed. "Why else would you be wearing that pathetic face? No; I cannot sense your intentions through the Force, not in the way that you can perceive mine, but we are not so far removed that news of importance doesn't reach us. Your '_redemption'_, as it's been termed, caused quite a stir," she murmured.

"I am sorry," he said gravely.

"We guessed as much. We still hold the lower levels; it could be years until it happens."

"And the Old-"

"No one holds the Old levels," she cut in, shaking her head. "The heating units failed first, then the air-exchangers and there was nothing to replace them with. Even _he_ would struggle to go through there now, though I've no doubt he could."

He made as if to argue, but checked himself, disquiet evident in the fresh tension across his stance. Once he might have contested her assessment; demanded, in fact, that she explain herself and how such a risk could be justified. The words caught in his throat, reflexive pride leaving behind a bitterness that made his newfound humility all the harder to express.

"How bad is it?" he asked instead, drawing his cloak in against the cold. Kisho set her charge down, one corner of her mouth quirking upwards in wordless approval. The child leaned into her, not truly awake, but shuffling along as the woman moved into the sheltered hall. She motioned for her guest to follow with a brusque jerk of her head, shrugging her hair back in the same movement.

"The Mid-Gates are sealed; unless they open he cannot come at us with any great numbers. But he controls the entire lower hemisphere, potentially growing another half-army every few years. He is limited now, by what the station itself can support." Even in the dim light of the hall, he could see tiredness in her tawny eyes.

Kisho stopped and leaned back against the stark metal wall. Narrow lighting strips ran along the high ceiling; most were failing, illuminating the long corridor in flickering shades of grey. The strip above them had almost died, leaving a few bright points. Her hands worked silently, clenching and unclenching as she considered her answer. Then her expression sharpened in grim amusement.

"We have been officially disowned as an unsuccessful experiment, so at least there'll be no more desperate attempts to retrieve their precious _samples_. Four ships in the last year, all on the wrong side of the Rift; but without external supplies, we know just how many soldiers he can have assembled at any one time. The Old Levels have been sealed off entirely. He can't come in that way, not without cutting through a few thousand bulkheads without the benefit of air.

"The Hunters have the worst of it, trying to keep the Maintenance Level clear when all their sensors keep failing. He never sends more than a few units at a time – light exercise for our side – but he's got his infantry bred down to the point they're just so many containers for his will. It'll be completely different when he decides to throw the whole lot against us." She spread her hands helplessly, not bothering to brush away the lazy curls that fell back across her face.

"You haven't answered my question, or San's. What do you want?" Her eyes were hidden, but he felt her attention narrowing on him. Ignoring the pointed tone, he moved to stand in front of her.

"I want to help," he replied, meeting her eyes for the first time. She raised an eyebrow.

"How? Arcanys is all but beyond our reach, even for you it would be – oh no," Kisho said, marvelling at the audacity of it. "How dare…You would destroy us twice over?" she snarled, detached air evaporating. "If you confront him now what do you think will happen?" He matched her incredulous stare, waiting.

Her composure returned quickly, made colder for the wait. He felt it coming, the sudden tenseness in the Force, shadows gathering at the edges of his vision, but he made no attempt to stop her.

The greyscale walls were gone, replaced with the artificial light of the Old levels, the Force seethed around him, all terror and rage, emanating from the pale figure before him. And it turned, slowly, the ashen cowl casting the face in shadow but doing nothing to conceal the gleaming white eyes, dead-looking and terrible. The fear was real, choking him as his own folly was laid bare.

"_Why did you come here?" _ The words were spoken quietly, without emotion; the eyes were only gently mocking. Even that was unnecessary as they both knew. Whatever reasons he had chosen for himself and his followers, he had come because he had been called.

The vision changed again, familiar. Red sand danced in the harsh winds around the ancient stone columns, wearing the rock down. A dark figure stood in the eye of it, admiring the ferocity of the storm, so similar to his own strength in battle, corroding everything around him. It pleased him to see the proud tombs of his forebears so reduced. He raised his arm slightly, a negligent flick of his hand stilling the biting wind as he loosened the tarnished mask –

"Please don't do that," he said evenly, dismissing the illusion. Kisho started, surprised by how gently he had freed himself.

"You've improved then," she said eventually. He nodded shortly, jaw set against the discomfort he still felt. Kisho smiled at him sadly.

"Arcanys would destroy you."

**A/N - Here is the first of the revised chapters: I decided to go over all of them and improve them since I needed something to do over the holidays, and the original versions needed some work. Hopefully they need less work now; the revised chapters 1-4 will go up soon.**


	2. Chapter 1

Star Wars: The Korasa Trial

_Chapter One:_

It was a pretty planet, Kamino; oceanic blue, distorted by the grey storm masses. Kagen Ced hoped he might see it more closely as it flashed out of view again. The pilot, a thickset human, sat intent at the controls, laser fire flaring against the ship's shields. White-blue light lanced across the transparisteel viewport as another starfighter emerged from the shadow of one of the lesser moons.

The little vessel gleamed, silver plating reflecting the dancing lights of the space battle. The transport was only lightly armed, but with a substantial shielding system. There were four of the smaller fighters on the offensive, bulbous cockpits flanked by forward-swept wings. Behind them a starship followed, its turbolasers tracking but not yet firing as the agile little ships herded the transport away from the refuge of the planet.

Kagen rocked forward in his harness, the ship shuddering despite the heavy shields it employed. Beset from all sides, under the constant fire from the agile fighters, they were beginning to fail. An adolescent Togruta, Kagen had yet to fully develop the montrals that allowed his species a unique sense of their surroundings, but he was uncomfortably aware of the closeness of the others packed around him. Outside, the starship glided in towards them, a dark blur against the stars.

A fresh volley peppered the ship - sparks dispersed across the viewport, but left ashy trails left in their wake. The pilot spared them a cursory glance before returning to his controls.

"Sir, the shields will collapse if we take many more hits," he reported with only mild unease evident in his voice. Like the guards he was a clone, identical, but for the coloured headpieces that designated his specific abilities. The letter-number codes stamped on the clone armour distinguished individual soldiers; but they none of them possessed the same degree of concern for their own preservation as other men.

"Keep flying," came the abrupt order as the warning lights began to flicker. "Kagen, Dorn; with me if you please." Extricating himself from the harness, Kagen obeyed, staggering slightly when the pilot pitched the transport out of the way of a fresh assault. One of the guards reached out to steady him, the other stepping out of the way of the Jedi Knight in charge of the mission.

Dahy Perak, built only a little less solidly than the cloned soldiers and standing perhaps a half-head taller than the ship's designers had intended, had been – was still – a relative unknown among the Order. True, after the deaths of the Enclaves former Masters, Jedi had rallied to Dantooine from a myriad of places to resurrect the training facility there to some semblance of its former self. But Dahy, taken in already quite grown by Master Ghus, had completed his training and progressed well into Knighthood without ever coming further coreward than Hutt Space.

In all honesty, Kagen could not decide whether he liked the grim-faced human. Apart from the polite introduction he had made on their departure, Dahy had retired to his quarters without two words. The clone soldiers themselves – the only other company to be had onboard – offered little conversation, except in regard to their duties.

A Jedi Padawan, Kagen had little say in the matter, but from the start, the mission to Kamino had been poorly explained, despite his Master's rare sympathy. He was sure _she_ might have told him further, but for the rest of the Council looking on from behind. As per the meagre instructions, he was to accompany Dahy to take possession of some as-yet-unidentified matter, protecting it until they could return it to the enclave.

Jedi were taught not to dwell on such things, but Kagen had had noticed the unusual caution immediately. Students at the enclave were encouraged to study the history of the Order, at least in part; and if the accounts were inclined to be generous, they could not conceal that the Council had not always been as true and forthcoming as their supporters may have chosen to believe. He had previously adopted the views of many of the Masters; that any secrecy had been employed for the good of the galaxy and the Order, but under fire in an unmarked transport above a planet he knew nothing about, it was easier to imagine their concern for the latter.

The space battle had rendered such opinions unimportant for the present and Kagen stumbled after Dahy, suddenly grateful for the narrow corridor that had been so awkward earlier in their voyage. With both hands free to balance himself, he could almost emulate the easy grace with which the Jedi Knight navigated the small space. Over the sound of laser firing striking the hull, a mechanical wail set up; followed by a fluttering change in the ship's internal gravity.

"Tractor beam has engaged Sir, we can't outrun them," the pilot said, his voice distorted over the ship's comm system.

"Alright; we are launching the escape pods. Once we're clear get down to the planet if you can,"  
Dahy said briskly, striding into the bay. "Esk, you and I will be going separately; Kagen, with Dorn. They don't want us dead – or at least they would seem to prefer that we survive this encounter, so," he paused, wincing slightly as the emergency klaxons blared.

"A ship that size can't have more than three tractor beams; if they want any of us they will have to disengage the transport. And they will go after the pods, I'm sure, but retargeting the things will take a few moments. Go for the moons." He nodded at them, stepping into one of the pods. The guards saluted; Kagen glanced between them, the characters on their headgear indistinct in the flashing light. A momentary wave of sickness rose in his throat as the gravity fluxes escalated.

The first of the clones ducked into the pod after Dahy, the Aurebesh characters E-4153 briefly defined by the fluorescent strips around the doorway. The other, Dorn, waited politely before the next pod, only moving to correct his balance with the stricken motion of the ship. Even as Kagen stooped through the frame, a queer tremor ran through the deck; this time the metal groaned in more profound distress.

Dorn followed, plugging in the launch sequence reflexively. The pod jerked erratically as the tractor beam lost its target; with the clone soldier guiding the tiny craft away, Kagen was left with little to do but stare out as one of the snow covered moons filled the viewport.

At the very edge of its range, the tractor beam found them again, spinning the pod on its axis. For a moment Kagen saw Dahy's pod, then white again as Dorn reverted almost all the power to the forward thrusters. The artificial atmosphere turned thin, uncomfortably so, but with a last twitch, the pod shot forward; then everything dissolved into static.

They were pitched downwards, white and grey flashing alternately as sparks danced across the viewport. Biting back a yell, Kagen shut his eyes against the glare, clutching his lightsaber much more tightly than was comfortable. Strangely he had no memory of having reached for it, but it was a vague comfort. Relaxing the near death-grip on the weapon, he endeavoured to find some measure of composure; opening one eye, he rather imagined Dorn was doing the same, albeit with more success. The man was breathing faster than usual, but his hands hadn't faltered on the controls.

"A deflector shield," he muttered, restoring the pod's atmosphere to normal power.

"We got through it alright – that doesn't even make sense; this pod has no systems that would break through that kind of shield," Kagen said, staring out the viewport. The snow-covered moon was gone; replaced with the dull sheen of metal.

"Never seen anything like it; it wasn't just a projector shield, but we definitely shouldn't have been able to get through it," Dorn said, bewildered.

He pulled the craft up, skimming over the surface. The expanse of grey was broken in several places, rough edges bordering deep fissures that ran down to black-grey stone. Kagen swallowed; he was dimly aware of Dahy's pod, some few hundred metres away, but his presence was fast fading. It was unlike any sensation in the Force he knew, and as their pod passed over one of the wider chasms, that presence winked out of existence.

Kagen felt it as a blow; he could see the pod, but somehow, inexplicably, Dahy was gone. Tenuous calm evaporating he cried out, straining to reach him through the Force, but there was nothing. Despair and death seemed to reverberate around him; shaking, he heard Dorn's startled yelp as if from a great distance, ion fire blossoming from heavy batteries concealed beneath the overhanging verges.

The world spun as the engines shut down, their pod spiralling despite Dorn's efforts to reengage the backup power. He met with some success; left to him the ship might have been able to land without killing them, but even as he struggled, the craft slowed, caught in another tractor beam.

It drew them back, under the cover of the third level; the two highest levels were closed off, but from there down the structure was less developed. Dorn stepped out of the pod, blaster rifle lowered in submission. Staggering after him, Kagen didn't truly register the low thud as he dropped it, nor the harsh voices of the masked warriors approaching them.

His eyes were fixed beyond them; every fibre of his being shrieked in warning, though he hardly knew of what. One of their captors started to turn, his red-striped mask painted in a savage grin. He shouted something; the others spun around, some even managing to raise their weapons as an explosion rocked the platform.

Metal squealed in protest, drowning out their panicked voices. The decking tilted down sharply, tearing away from the jagged line that had opened up before them. Kagen saw him, briefly, a black-robed man with dark hair and eyes; appallingly young for the twisted surge in the Force that preceded him; then the world fell out from under him.

**A/N - I feel a bit sorry for Kagen; he's a decent main character to work with, but has such an unhappy start. ****This is the revised version of the story and I'm hoping it's now a bit easier to understand and read. Suggestions and feedback are very welcome, especially if I've left some staggeringly dumb spelling mistake in there.**


	3. Chapter 2

Star Wars: The Korasa Trial

_Chapter Two:_

Consciousness came grudgingly, and Kagen immediately wished it hadn't. After a moment he realized that he would be better off assessing what _didn't_ hurt. The oppressive terror he had felt on the platform no longer lingered, but he could not quite shake the nagging sense that he had missed something important.

With some relief, he concluded that nothing felt broken – painful, certainly – but that was to be expected. He was lying on a hard cot, in a dark room. Moving one hand slightly, he suppressed a shiver; the coarse fabric was deeply cold, except where his body had warmed it.

He sat up cautiously, bruised muscles throbbing in mild protest. Two rudimentary lighting strips ran overhead, presently dimmed, the only adornments the metal-walled cell offered. Somewhere he could hear some sort of air exchanger running, a shrill hum that began to grate against his ears.

Steadying himself, he reached out to the Force, pushing past his reluctance at what he might find. The nagging feeling returned, foreboding, and for a moment his breath caught in his throat. He couldn't sense Dahy, or Dorn, but that could be explained if only they were too far away from him. _A Jedi always has hope_, he thought, without conviction; he felt strangely hollow.

With a small start, he snatched at his lightsaber, but came away with only a handful of cloth. He dropped his hand down. Not truly surprising; it was a blow nonetheless. A low cry of dismay escaped him, echoing and overloud in the stillness. The sound faded slowly until only his ragged breathing remained. He put his head in his hands – an un-meditative posture, but that seemed of little consequence.

The Force hung heavy around him, it tore through him, offering no respite. He stretched out to it, trying to find some pattern to the wild tumult but it surged on regardless. Dazed and wretched, he pulled away. In greater part it subsided, a sullen presence lingering, beyond his ability to dispel. Shaken as he was, it was several long moments before he realized that the cell door had slid open.

He looked up sharply, wincing as his body remonstrated the sudden movement. A woman, human at first glance, entered blithely, a glow-rod held against the gloom. She was quite short, pale eyes darting to the far corner. Visibly wilting, she stomped across the small room, detaching a worn hydrospanner from her belt.

A stream of foreign words broke the long-standing silence as she tinkered with a battered heating stick; slightly apologetic sounding. Something clanged onto the floor and the woman hissed in indignation, thumping the cylindrical unit and replacing whatever part had forsaken its duty. The device spluttered feebly – her shoulders went quite stiff as if she were contemplating a violent end for it – then whirred back into life.

An orange glow radiated from the restored unit. Gratefully, Kagen felt a wave of warmth breaking over his numbed limbs. The woman eyed the heating stick a moment longer, daring it to misbehave, before turning to face the young Togruta. She apologised again; the words were unfamiliar, but her intention quite apparent. With a flash of understanding she broke off, trying instead a few solitary phrases, each quite different.

Kagen recognized a few of the languages, but shook his head – he scarcely knew two words of any of the tongues introduced in his studies, save his native language of Togruti. Looking faintly disappointed, she hooked the hydrospanner back onto her belt.

"I suppose you speak Basic then?" she said blandly, glancing back over her shoulder. Briefly dumbfounded, he stared blankly at her. Her expression fell slightly; she began to say something else.

"I speak Basic," he replied hurriedly. Brightening, she nodded at him.

"Good. You are a Jedi?" Her expression was one of mild interest; she might have been chatting in a cantina for all the disquiet she showed. Kagen wondered if it was worth concealing that fact, but he could sense no ill feeling directed towards him.

"I am…Kagen – that is, I am a Padawan, not yet a full Jedi," he said thickly, hoping he hadn't made a mistake.

"Thank you. The heating unit; I fixed it yesterday but the power cell keeps coming loose, I beg your pardon. It'll last for a while now." Still rather at a loss, Kagen could only nod as she muttered something about being unable to use the local grid.

"We were shot down, where is this – the shield…?" he asked uncertainly.

"Hmm?" she said vaguely; she had been eying the heating stick suspiciously. "Gaara; second largest moon of Kamino; you did not come from there or else you'd have at least recognized the language. In short, this is an off the record testing facility, long abandoned by its creators but still floundering in the muddle they left behind. There's a combined projector/deflector shield to keep it all from discovery. " She nodded in conclusion, the door sliding up at her approach.

"Wait – please!" Kagen said dumbly; his head was beginning to spin. There were too many questions all clamouring for attention.

"Who are you?" he croaked eventually. The girl – for she didn't seem much older than he was – considered him, without pity.

"Yasue. You're safe here, for the moment; rest while you can because we cannot stay put for more than a few hours," she said flatly, the door sliding down behind her.

Kagen started after her; already her presence was becoming faint. Two taut breaths later, and it had vanished entirely, leaving him quite alone again. Panic rose in his throat, robbing him of his strength and he fell back onto the cot.

Time dragged on unbearably, the high-pitched whine of the air exchangers combining with the louder drone of the heating unit. He dozed fitfully, coming awake every few minutes with the queer remembrance of where he was. After an hour he slept a little; it eased his bodily discomfort a little, but did nothing to lessen the barely constrained dread that wrenched at his core.

Eventually he came back to himself, jolting in to full consciousness at impressive death-rattle of the heating stick. Opening his eyes, he stared blearily at it; already the orange glow had dimmed. It was tempting to stay prone, just staring up at the parallel lines of rivets across the ceiling, but he forced himself up.

His body ached, persistent, but it was much improved. The sound of the air exchangers still buzzed unpleasantly in his ears. Kagen frowned; Yasue had mentioned that the heating unit had been fixed a whole day before, but he had no idea how long he had been in the cell.

Hunger would suggest at least half a day, but it was difficult to tell. He approached the door warily; doubtful as to if it would open for him. It did, sliding into its housing without complaint. Stepping through, he found himself in a curved hallway; it was continued upwards through another level. Unmarked doors stood closed at intervals down the stark walls.

Above him, distant footsteps rang against the exposed plating. Craning his neck back, he thought he saw someone pass over one of the crosswise catwalks. The tall corridor was better lit than the cell, and as he watched another traversed the narrow space. There was no conversation, but it was reassuring to know there were other living people nearby.

Of course, it was entirely possible that they were all enemies; considering this, Kagen reached out cautiously. He caught a flicker of intent that might have been one of them, but it twisted free of his grasp almost immediately. There was so much _noise_, the Force shifting so violently as to distort any one sensation like smoke. He could not find them again; but there was no cry of alarm or challenge at his clumsy probe; the shadows passed overhead without hesitating in the least.

He walked slowly down the hallway, deliberately quiet. Passing three doors, he reached a branch point. The following corridor looked identical to the first; with some trepidation, he turned to be sure of which one he had come from. There were several angular characters inked on the durasteel walls and he was fairly sure he could recognize the one that marked the right direction.

The arc of the structure was wide enough to hide the next intersection until the first was out of site. Again there were four passageways; one running in both directions, perpendicular to the curving path that looked to continue in a full circle. He was rather pleased to see that the wider hall came to an end, not twenty paces distant at the heavy blast doors that had to lead to the exterior. It relieved the feeling of monotonous immensity anyway. The corridor opposite similarly drew to a close, framing an important looking door.

A red light flashed as he came nearer, but like the cell door, it opened smoothly. It revealed a cavernous dome, the ceiling arcing to a centre many times his height. Gleaming disks covered its surface; the offshoots of the air exchange system, currently inactive. Cross-legged, Yasue sat to one side, very still.

A small sphere of glass was balanced on her fingertips. It looked quite delicate; vulnerable as it was, supported only by the narrow tripod formed from her first three fingers. In the muted light he saw had not been mistaken; she was almost certainly human, dust-coloured hair falling in a short veil around her face. Her pale eyes were closed, though he could almost convince himself that he saw her hair stir in the wind from her breath.

Maybe it was the dome, but the harsh twisting in the Force seemed to have slowed. Several steps away there was not a flicker of her presence; for a moment his breath caught in despair. Then her face shifted, a small hiss of air twitched away a few dangling strands.

"Grief, you're noisy," she said, opening one eye, gently reproachful. Kagen could only stare at her for a long moment, sudden relief depriving him of speech. With her free hand, she flicked the stray strands of hair away, opening both eyes to observe him fully. The little orb remained balanced, glinting.

"You need to slow down," she murmured. "You cannot direct the Force here; it goes where it and you will only wear yourself down trying. Wrenching at it like that will also alert anyone who's listening; thankfully only me and maybe Si'en. But that will keep." Managing to keep her right hand relatively still, she stood up. For a shining moment – and he could see the mild satisfaction on her face – the globe stayed motionless. Then it fell; she caught it deftly with her other hand, and it was only after he heard the muted clink that he realized it was prosthetic.

The dull finish had been worn down to the metal in some places, but it was hard to tell the extent of the replacement. Dark armour covered her forearms and torso, the shaped pieces close enough in colour to make the mechanic limb inconspicuous. But the hand itself was unusual, amorphous spheres serving as fingertips and joints that were traditionally fashioned in metal, more closely based on the original shapes. Some sensitivity had been reintroduced, clearly, as she handled the small object easily, but the prosthesis was distinctly military.

The armour, fixed onto a slightly lighter jumpsuit, fitted well enough; it was only the armguards that seemed too loose, padded with plain sleeves in the same shade as her long skirt. The hard-wearing fabric was not unlike his Jedi robes, but bleached of its original colour, and her weapon had been slotted haphazardly between the securing bands of cloth. The glass sphere quickly joined it, clacking against some other item stashed within.

"I was about to come and get you; the Mid-Gates close in less than an hour." She made no further comment, just led the way back through the halls. Kagen followed, some small degree of hope rising.

"What happened; after the platform collapsed?"

"Si'en brought you in. We lost seven people in that blast," she replied, her stride turned quite rigid.

"I'm sorry. There was a man with me; and another escape pod, do you know…?" Yasue turned to meet his eyes as the cell door slid open.

"No one else has been found yet," she said bluntly. "The attack was unanticipated, not in concurrence with their previous raids. Four Kouven, no less: the ones with black masks. The explosion was almost nine hours ago," she added. Throwing the deceased heating stick a disgusted look, she slid out a shallow compartment from the cot's base. Inside was Kagen's lightsaber, undamaged; though his utility belt beside it looked a little battered.

Yasue handed them to him, placing the heating unit in the drawer below. It just fit, but she managed pack in the hydrospanner and another more obscure tool between two of its conduction plates.

"This is the maintenance level; outside the Mid-Gates there's no artificial atmosphere, but the moon's own is bearable. We're in one of the Dome Complexes, 318-14; there's at least one cell set up with a heating stick and airscrubber in each. The sound carries a long way down here but we have decoy activations, so one can usually assume half a day before Byaven – white masks – come to investigate."

"At the platform I saw one person in a mask; red and white," Kagen offered.

"One of ours then; Gaara has massive cloning facilities, the only ones still functional located in the Lower Hemisphere, all under the control of a very dangerous being. Byaven, Kouven; there are six lines of clones produced and you can distinguish them by their stabilizer masks. White bands and so on, but the base colour is black. Members of the Hunter Divisions, like my party, have white-based masks, mostly for the sake of it," she finished vaguely, waving the cracked example she had tied to her waist. It looked rather like a Kath Hound, long dark lines for eyes, with pointed ears, and another set inked on in blue.

"There was someone else," Kagen began reluctantly. "Human; he had no mask at all."

"Kariven don't always wear their masks; they're mostly medics and mechanics, but it's rare to see them this far out. They're usually quite fair, and always have green markings on their armour."

"No, he had dark hair. He was quite…evil." Yasue studied him for a moment, perturbed. He met her eyes steadily, sure in his recollection. Nodding finally, she muttered something indecorous under her breath and snatched out a crude comlink. She deactivated it after a handful of words and shut her eyes.

"Communications are restricted; I'll enquire after your companion tomorrow but the Mid-Gates are locked down and we need to move. The next dome is a half-sec – about four kilometres – away. If you have something you can eat quickly in that fancy belt, feel free; I'm going to shut down the airscrubber," she said unhappily, traipsing into the hallway.

There was a fine coating of dust on both belt and weapon. Kagen brushed the worst of it off and coaxed the twisted clasp back together. His comlink was gone, but three food capsules remained, all intact. Swallowing the substitute meal took only a few seconds; not particularly fulfilling, but it worked. More gratifying was the weight of his lightsaber now restored to its position over his hip.

Yasue's presence had disappeared again, but it did not cause him the same extent of unease as before. The hum of the airscrubber petered out a moment later, dispelling the worst of the remainder. Fed – after a fashion – he felt greatly recovered. He hoped fervently that Dahy and the clones had fared as well.

Suppressing a pang of hopelessness, he sat down, stretching a little. His leg particularly, still claimed grievance, aching occasionally. He reached out to the Force, tentatively, feeling foolish in his caution, but loath to repeat his earlier failure. It swelled around him, a roiling, ominous mass, but there it stopped.

Kagen stayed that way a while, the currents shifting uncomfortably against him. He was dimly aware that the pain in his leg had lessened; more pressing was the fluttering alarm nearby. Reflexively, he tried to draw it in – the resulting flood of sensation quite swallowed him – and for a long moment he floundered under the weight of it all. Then it was abruptly, forcibly gone, and Yasue there, dragging him out of the cell as the lights all shut off.

"_Sou!" _she hissed vehemently. "We have to move now," she repeated, eyes huge in the semi-darkness. A stun baton cackled in her hand, glaringly bright charge dancing along its length. Her mask hung around her neck in two pieces, connected by two taut strands of tape, the tapered lines of its eyes now forming an elongated grin; quite sinister.

Stumbling in the darkness, Kagen grasped blindly at the Force to steady himself.

"No!" Yasue insisted; for the first time since landing he felt her frustration clearly, and a nagging sort of dismay that was directed more universally, before he found himself put firmly away from it. She hauled him along the narrow corridor, their footsteps ringing out into the shadows. The narrow corridors seemed unbearably close now, the light from Yasue's weapon vanishing less than a metre out.

They passed through another intersection, the empty space on either side echoing queerly through Kagen's short montrals. Ahead, Yasue came to a halt. The door to the dome's centre slid up with an appallingly loud hiss. Kagen felt the disturbance; something shifting in the yawning stillness. His hand closed around the cool hilt of his lightsaber, thumbing the green blade into life as he stepped around Yasue.

There was no help for it; she seemed to have frozen in place, her weapon pointing at the ground. He stretched out to the Force in earnest. It surged around him, and he brought his sabre around in a wide arc. The dark slit-eyes of the stabilizer mask flashed in the glowing blade's wake, and the man fell down into blackness. Kagen felt his death; it tore at him, merging with the overbearing sense of anguish that twisted through the chamber. But fresh stabs of intent and anger blazed beside him, and the sickening realization dawned on him even as the two red-white blades ignited. His own weapon was too far out, and he could only block one.

His momentum carried him forward, and he caught the first blow easily, rolling under its red light and wrenching the hilt of his sabre around into a movement he knew he wouldn't complete. Close enough to see the angular symbols scored into the black metal face, he struck out with the Force; the man jerked back, but the Force push had been woefully flimsy. Kagen shut his eyes involuntarily as the brilliant scarlet blade continued on its inexorable sweep towards him.

It didn't make much difference, save to soften the glare a little more. His heartbeat rang in his ears together with his breathing, denoting his continued existence even in its last painful seconds. A gust of wind stirred his robes, cool against his skin. The light had passed over him, and he opened his eyes, almost bemused, to see the human bringing his lightsaber around again from a strike that had gone far too wide. A wave of heat marked its passage, suddenly negated as a harsh wall of air blew past, hurling the man into obscurity.

A weighty thump announced his demise as he connected with the curving walls. Kagen turned slowly, the steady glow of his sabre mixing with the ever-shifting lights of Yasue's weapon. It hung in her artificial hand, casting a slight silhouette on the ground where the second man had fallen. Her right arm was partially outstretched, fingers still curled in a vague gesture.

As his eyes adjusted, Kagen saw another mask glinting behind her, its bearer stretched out on the floor. The dull sound of the last man's fall had lingered, and he was acutely aware that he had heard other such sounds during the fight. More dark patches resolved themselves; three in a sad little row beside her, more slumped against the walls. He gave up counting, just looking at her. She gazed back, curiosity standing out on her pale face as she lowered her hand.


	4. Chapter 3

Star Wars: The Korasa Trial

_Chapter 3:_

"They're all dead," Kagen said dully, not quite sure if he was asking or stating a fact. Nodding shortly, Yasue turned away, her lips moving soundlessly. Kagen was struck by with the rather morbid notion that she was counting the bodies – it was confirmed a moment later, when she muttered to herself "fourteen". It was an appalling number, for a battle of a scant few minutes; made more so by her apparent indifference.

Without warning, the lighting strips stuttered back into life, throwing the dome into sharp relief. Yasue tutted under her breath, shutting her baton off. The left over charge spluttered noisily down the shaft as she prised the power cell from its casing. She tucked the weapon into her sash, more concerned with the charred line across her mechanic arm. The fabric-covered armour – and the better part of her sleeve – was unceremoniously cast aside as she scrubbed at the black residue underneath.

The prosthesis itself was quite skeletal, lacking any cosmetic plating, but for the battered metal shell that ran along the forearm. The replacement continued past her elbow, ending somewhere under the remaining sleeve, for she moved her shoulder too easily for it to be fully mechanical. Then, abruptly, Yasue jerked the guard plate back, a complete 180o, while she tinkered with the wiring underneath.

Something sparked; she gave a tiny, plaintive yelp, and swung the guard back into place. A fine stab of pain lanced through the Force; quickly dissipated in the roiling aftermath of so many deaths in succession. Kagen was deeply aware of it, instinctively drawing away and closing himself off to it.

"That was dangerous," Yasue sighed, closing her eyes. Kagen stood in silence a moment longer, until she opened one eye, watching him expectantly. His lightsaber wavered in his hand, casting a slight green shadow. Belatedly he shut it off, the hilt slick with cold sweat. He clipped it back onto his belt purely by habit, gazing around the dome and the crumpled forms that littered the floor.

"You're not injured are you?" she said eventually, a little anxiously. "Oh, that's a Kouven, Byaven and Araven," she added when he shook his head, flapping her hand to encompass the fallen soldiers. "Black, white and silver markings respectively; on the stabilizer masks; and Kouven are Force-sensitive."

Kagen shook his head to clear it, trying to match her dispassionate appraisal of the scene. The masks shone in the artificial light; most of them looked new, bright white markings drawn exactly across the metal faces, but the man stretched out below him was a plainly different. In addition to the grey clone armour, he wore an overlying robe, dark as the short-cropped hair that blurred into the unbroken black face. His mask was less perfect, pitted with silver, a thick line scored across it, and his hand was still curled around his lightsaber.

It was a crude weapon, duplicate of those carried by the two other robed men; he himself was a replica. The same height and colouring, they were identical but for the scars of previous battles etched onto the masks and armour of each one. Realisation was slow in coming; that Force-sensitivity could be cloned was wholly _wrong_, clearly possible, but still –

"Not good," Yasue said suddenly; her comlink was emitting quiet static, and a dim klaxon began to sound. She hurried to the far door, stepping neatly around one of the bodies. "Come on!" she said more insistently when he hesitated.

She led the way through the corridors, too quickly to make sense of the markings. Their footsteps seemed absurdly loud now, the continuous alarm joined by an artificially polite voice repeating instructions in the same unfamiliar language that Yasue was using as she snapped a few orders over an alternate channel.

They turned onto a wider path, this time moving in a direct line away from the centre. Kagen took a half step back as a tall being appeared at a branch point ahead of them, even as Yasue stuck her arm out to check him. The alien nodded at him, overlarge eyes dominating the pale skull; bent down, his head still cleared Kagen's thrice over, and he simply towered over Yasue.

"My lieutenant, Zea," Yasue muttered, halting where the corridor ended in a pair of huge blast doors. "How far behind are they – in Basic if you please," she amended, cutting short his softly spoken, incomprehensible explanation.

"Tem-dana has Obee, they are trying to delay the lockdown," Zea said neutrally, the words affected and strange.

"There were fourteen in the centre, how many came past you?" Yasue spoke without looking at him, plugging numbers into the security panel beside the doors.

"Only four Byaven. There are at least two unaccounted for, but their unit must have crossed the Rift after the first attack. Obee detected some minor movement outside Dome Complex 318-16, possibly Si'en."

"She's further away than that I think… There were three Kouven with that unit, more than there's been for a long time, but this sector is a dead end…ah!" She rounded on the Padawan behind them, ignoring the persistent nagging of the klaxon and the security console beeping uncooperatively.

"You said your ship was attacked; by what?" Her voice was clipped and more strained than he'd heard it.

"I don't know, there were starfighters I didn't recognize – pirates maybe, then the pods were caught by ion fire." The furrow in her brow deepened, not for his mean explanation, but terse reproof directed inward and wrought with apprehension.

"But your ship; it crashed here?"

"We jettisoned in the escape pods before then but I don't understand how we got through the shields," he replied quickly, startled by the sudden clarity in the Force. Zea felt cold, not unperturbed, but not at all worried for his companions' sake; unlike Yasue who was vaguely concerned about more things than he could make sense of. They all seemed to stem from the same dull fear, a presence that slid over her consciousness; then the sense changed and they were all summarily dismissed.

"The shields were specifically designed to prevent any lightspeed-capable vessels reaching the surface, so your pods may not have registered, but there are no pirates in Kaminoan space; not for long anyway, and especially not near this moon. If they were after your ship, they'd have brought it down as intact as possible –" she broke off as the console began another sequence of negative beeps, but the rest were lost in the high-pitched shriek of tearing metal.

It rose intolerably; Kagen didn't remember falling, but pain was clawing its way inwards, driving out all thought, the Force far beyond reach. He lay on the cold floor, unable to do anything but exist as time dragged on. The sound throbbed in his ears, an agonizing heartbeat that rose and fell with his own ragged breathing that he felt rather than heard.

It slowed eventually, shrinking to a steady urgent beeping. A glowing orb hovered before the blast doors, a green light flashing at its core. It was a droid of some sort, not actually glowing, but with a fusioncutter tuned onto the control panel. Kagen pulled away as rough hands pulled him up, sick and dazed. Yasue stood next to the droid, glancing between the besieged controls and the Padawan; more bewildered than hurt. Another human was supporting him, an apologetic grimace sliding across his face. He said something slowly, pressing a breather into Kagen's hand, his own hanging from a cord around his neck.

The droid whistled sharply, barely audible, as the great doors shuddered apart. Kagen staggered backwards; something bad was coming, but the words wouldn't come. Air rushed silently out into the darkness and with equal silence, a red blade ignited.

The Kouven barrelled through them, his lightsaber slicing into the durasteel wall. Yasue had already moved, her baton flaring into life. The two weapons met an instant later, painfully bright. For an instant white-blue charge wreathed the connection, then the lightsaber hilt shattered. The clone never faltered, drawing a second saber with his good hand as the other dropped to his side in ruin. Kagen saw the great red arc of his strike and no more; the human – Tem – had dragged him out of the doorway.

Zea came behind, and the droid, following the curved walls of the dome structure. Long seconds later, Yasue appeared, the broken halves of her mask swinging loose. She fumbled with her own breather, the light of the stun baton giving out as she reeled after them, but Kagen could feel the Force radiating from her.

It steadied him, strength seeping into his limbs. The blast doors crashed together, somewhere behind them, rendering the darkness absolute. His hearing was returning, though his ears rang unpleasantly. His perception through the Force was clearer; the immense curved wall of the dome extending to an unseen ceiling, Yasue and her companions running alongside it, and a rounded hole where the droidhovered in the air.

Kagen caught the flicker of warning, even as the curving wall was suddenly defined against the reddish gleam of blaster fire. He was already rolling forward when Yasue knocked the other two down, an invisible hand that forced them under the line of fire. Black and white stabilizer masks gleamed in the light of a second volley.

Yasue stepped towards them, eyes half-closed, a vast shudder running through the Force. Her presence in the Force had all but vanished, deliberately; Kagen caught a trace of the dreadful will behind the attack, but she had closed herself off almost entirely. The blurred presence of the clones was simply erased. An eerie stillness crept in around them; the echoes of blaster fire lingering in all directions.

"That was a full unit of Byaven and there's still one missing from the first," Yasue said flatly, her breathing fractionally faster than it had been. Obee, go in front please; we're heading for Dome 16 and I want to find that last Ven." Tem paused, his assault rifle pointed at the floor, as he adjusted to the sudden lack of opposition.

"_Ouken_?" he asked, not quite disapproving, but not at ease.

"They shut down the specific complex we were in and a mere coincidence is pretty unlikely. If the last one is another Kouven around, it might make another try at Jedi-da here. An ouken is the fastest way to dispatch them and they already know we're out here." She flapped her hand distractedly, reattaching the cord that had come loose from her breather. Tem's face was momentarily revealed as Obee drifted past; set and serious, but he nodded in agreement.

"How many are in a unit?" Kagen spoke up reluctantly, not entirely sure he wanted to know, but he doubted there would be much conversation once they started to move. There was something apologetic about the way she looked at him; but not quite sympathy.

"Only twenty, but that usually includes several Araven or a Kouven. That one by the door, he almost got you; ouken, a Force-drawn illusion, so I beg your pardon for that. Again." Kagen nodded, accepting the apology automatically, and trying to put his recollections in some semblance of order.

There had been a sound, pretty loud; he was sure because the others were speaking very carefully to make themselves understood. The Force could be used to manipulate the senses, but it had been so excessively painful, unlike any Jedi techniques known to him. And Yasue felt guilty; hardly in crippling amounts, but her sense remained distant and more cross with herself than anything else. She'd turned away again, following the droid out from the dome's wall, but there was still no fathoming how she had destroyed the clones; and how she could remain completely unconcerned.

"Obee, mark time," Yasue called ahead. "I think we just started the third battle of Sector three-eighteen."


	5. Chapter 4

Star Wars: The Korasa Trial

_Chapter 4:_

They travelled in complete darkness, but for the occasional dim light given off by Obee. The droid turned around every few minutes, drifting backwards through the air while he made certain that no one was missing. Kagen concentrated purely on running, matching his pace to the others. Their footsteps composed a strange rhythm; Zea's ponderous strides each accounting for three of Tem's. Yasue, closer in height to the Padawan, had fallen exactly into step with him. It made him smile for some reason, an absolutely mundane detail that offered no contribution to...anything really; but it was reassuring nonetheless.

When that rhythm faltered, he felt it immediately. She wasn't falling behind, but ran unevenly. The Force shifted restlessly, a nagging haze of discomfort closing around her. A moment later, it was quelled, none too gently, allowing no sympathy. Kagen knew it was still there – the Force was as strong now as it had been inaccessible before, and she could not suppress the fleeting, helpless frustration that followed.

It was a bizarre sensation; her presence was so clear, yet she kept her emotions so controlled as to imperceptible. Zea was stranger still; he had a detached almost grudging respect for the others, but no concern for their wellbeing. Obee, of course, was a blank void in the Force, a hole in the living energy around them; Tem, an uncomplicated soldier.

He at least had a sense of affection about him; finally noticing the change in stride, he glanced back at Yasue, concern implicit in his expression. She met his eyes, waving him on hurriedly. He shrugged, muttering something vague in their language, and let it drop.

For some time, Kagen had been distantly aware of the yawning space surrounding them. It was a little uncomfortable, a persistent ache in the hollows of his montrals that bespoke emptiness. He couldn't see it, and the Force was still, but he knew they were approaching another dome long before it appeared, coloured grey-green by Obee's photoreceptor.

The doors opened easily enough, huge as they were; Obee hovered in front of them, gave a few important sounding beeps, and led the way down the narrow passage. Stepping inside was disorientating, the air becoming more solid. The temperature changed fractionally, Kagen's cloak settling in stiff, cold folds. Yasue paused in the doorway, looking out across the dark, and tiny in the huge frame. It was then a familiar claxon sounded, entirely faster than before.

"In," Tem snapped, a low whine rising from above them. With a spluttering wail, a thick energy shield descended over the doorway, less than a metre out from the dome itself. The whitish shroud hummed; bright one moment, then fading almost into transparency.

Other domes were lighting up, brilliant shields spreading over them; one remained unlit. The dome they had left was visible as a dense hemisphere of shadow, kilometres away. The space between them was grey and devoid of life, though odd pieces of equipment were scattered, casting long shadows. The droning sound of the generators turned more urgent, tracing a great wall of light past them, stretching on without end in both directions. Then the lighting strips flickered on, inconsequential and ridiculous.

"Full lockdown," Yasue said blankly. Obee gave a low whistle, sinking lower to the ground.

"Did we do that?" Tem turned to face Kagen, bleak. His was a rather mournful face by nature, long and thin, but now seemed carved of stone. Then he paled, staring past him. The Force rocked with sudden danger, and Kagen spun around to see a gleaming black mask on the other side of the shield. The Kouven watched them, touching his red blade against the shield in a hissing shower of sparks. It bounced off with no effect and he deactivated it, merely watching.

Kagen shivered; savage intent rolled off the man, the Force twisting horribly around him. Yasue perceived it, and with cold purpose, brought the weight of her own attack to bear. She didn't move at all, or speak, but Kagen felt the clone mind flinch away from her grip. There was a truly awful moment when the clone recognized his inevitable death; not with fear, but mechanic acceptance. Then he was gone, the body falling back away from the shield.

"Oi suge, Darth," Tem said mildly. Yasue raised an eyebrow at the complement, a little disapproving, then froze. Her eyes flicked towards Kagen's, a stupidly guilty expression fixed on her face. Tem glanced between them uneasily.

"O, sou!" he muttered in sudden comprehension. Yasue leaned against the wall, breath hissing out between her teeth.

"Zea-dana, please see to the airscrubber. Cell 2-41." The tall alien blinked his orb-like eyes, bowing his head in Yasue's direction. "Obee shut the doors and see if you can get the perimeter sensors online, Kagen, Tem-da, with me please," she continued, limping down the corridor.

The giant blast doors crashed together, over-loud. Tem walked quietly, contrite. The air was stale, Kagen hadn't noticed it so much before, but it left a sour taste in his mouth. Yasue was a few steps ahead; he almost walked into her when she stopped just around the corner.

"Here," she muttered, almost inaudibly. Tem looked at her sharply, stepping around the Padawan.

"Darasu so heat stick, Tae-da," he said hurriedly, ducking into the cell. Kagen followed, glancing over his shoulder; Yasue's eyes were half-closed and dull. The room was larger than the other, completely empty, but several bunks slid out of the wall as Tem slid his hand over a sensor panel. He tried a few drawers, before pulling out a truly archaic heating unit. More squat than stick-shaped, it coughed out copious amounts of dust, before the fan began to spin properly; then stank of burnt grime. It also rattled sporadically.

Yasue sat down immediately, fingers curled around the edge of the bunk. Somewhere, the airscrubber activated the sound thin and annoying to Kagen's still-sore ears.

"I'm not a Sith," Yasue said. "It's –"she broke off, looking critically at the heating unit. Frowning slightly, she flapped her hand at it. The Force twitched in response, and something creaked inside the unit. Abruptly, the rattling stopped. It still wasn't very quiet, but the worst of the grating noise was relieved.

"Ow," Yasue muttered, bringing her hand across her eyes. The protective walls she had created through the Force wavered, fatigue and discontent showing through. No anger, nor hate. No desperate lust for power either, but indignation _– 'Damn Sei,'_ sounded as clearly as though she had spoken.

"It's a nickname of sorts, Gaaran grammar; 'daru' and 'teru'–"Kagen nodded, trying not to smile. She was in complete earnest; serious, and so very un-Sith-like.

"I'll take your word for it," he said.

Light footsteps preceded Zea's return, the door sliding up but still too short to let him enter without stooping. He ignored the bunks, but his eyes lingered disdainfully, on the battered heater. A narrow crest traversed his skull, fractionally darker than his pale skin; so white as to almost glow. He sat gracefully, delicate and strange. The high plastoid collar and curving armour seemed completely at odds with the rudimentary furnishings of the cell. He apparently agreed; controlled distaste coloured the Force around him. Then Kagen felt the very deliberate dismissal as the alien's thoughts were closed off to him. The great eyes turned to him, seemingly lit from within, and a fine green colour at their core.

"You are very clumsy," Zea remarked. He directed his attention to Yasue: "Obee is monitoring the security cameras; he has a clear field of view within a radius of five kilometres." She nodded and drew her knees up to her chin.

"Following a full lockdown, communications will be out for at least an hour more. We should eat." Tem opened his pack, passing around greyish ration bars. They had a very bland, inoffensive flavour, not as unpromising as they looked. There was no water, but a vaguely sweet, pinkish liquid, was poured out and passed around. Yasue breathed out slowly, back against the wall and her eyes shut. Then she opened one, lazily.

"I need another power cell; mine died." Tem raised an eyebrow sceptically, handing her a small cylinder. He grumbled something at her, still in their language – Gaaran, Kagen supposed.

"Naa, Dar – Tae-da," he amended the address hastily, but maintained the same reproachful tone. She let him get halfway through, interrupting when he overlooked the slightly pointed silence.

"Speak Basic please." Tem looked a little pained. 'I can try and fix your com later, but you can still speak it in the meantime."

"Not well," was the bland reply. He paused again, reconsidering the vaguely condescending manner.

"We've only got three baton-charges left; discharging the whole cell can short out a lightsaber, as you so aptly demonstrated, but it might be wise to save the last ones. They already know we're out here so can't you just use an ouken_?_" The words were understandable, and spoken a much more professional accent, but there were strange pauses between and within the phrases that seemed to be involuntary.

"If I'd used an ouken it would have left you all open to any other Kouven out there. There was a Ven unaccounted for, and Kouven are the only ones that ever work alone. It's also impossible to link three minds through one; I had to block the one against Kagen first," she said flatly. Tem frowned at her, then at the Padawan, and then blinked in realisation.

"Huh. You're lucky, ouken aren't very nice," he said, a rather grim note entering his voice. "Who are you anyway? Jedi?"

"Kagen Ced; I'm a Padawan. Our ship was attacked over Kamino. There were three others with me; you didn't find the other pod?" Tem shook his head gloomily.

"Another party maybe, Si'en just brought you. Fourth-div, Oga Temaru by the way; that's Zea Ne." He pointed helpfully at the lieutenant. Despite the strange cadence, he spoke with more empathy than either of his superiors, recognizing Kagen's curiosity before he could voice it.

"My language model needs replacement, which makes translations into Basic a bit disjointed. I understand it very well, but it takes a bit longer to say; the speed will improve as the system adjusts. At least I don't talk like a protocol droid." Yasue blew a wisp of hair away from her face, ignoring him a little too deliberately. Tem met her eyes and shrugged innocently, before turning back to the Padawan. His armour was a much lighter shade of grey; fitted like Yasue's, but markedly thicker, and it was a few seconds before his words sunk in.

"OGA: Omni-Gan-Ateru, it's a clone designation," he offered, leaning forward to show the metallic collar that extended halfway around the back of his neck. There was a puckered dent in his skin where the augmenting wires connected the system, but his mind felt entirely human. "Means that my combat computer is fully integrated

"You saw; clones are extremely vulnerable to Force influences, since their consciousnesses are almost identical. Clones in the Hunter Divisions are fitted with cybernetics that allow us to carry out our duties, even if our conscious minds are affected. It's an imperfect process and it wears the language modules down quickly; even if the implant itself stays dormant, there's a constant translation running to detect any potential violations of its programming. Say if I intended to point my weapon at Tae-da –" he did so, raising the long blaster rifle quickly, " – it would activate and stop me." The motion became sporadic, muscles working under the skin, and his speech turned quite expressionless. Relaxing, he let the weapon drop, twitching away the remaining tension.

"Basically it's a default setting that prevents clones from turning on their own side. It doesn't generally affect how personality translates from the original template. I'm from the same source as Araven, but since the average clone lifespan is about 10-and-a-half years, and I'm twenty-four, they look pretty different. _Ma ii,_" he trailed off, taking a sizable bite of his ration bar.

Tem was not at all Force-sensitive, but he seemed to feel Zea's gaze on him all the same. The lieutenant's expression was carefully dispassionate; only the eyes seemed cold. If Tem was offended by the unasked censure, he didn't show it, shrugging again. His quiet cynicism seemed far too distinct for a cloned mind, though he followed Zea's example and let the matter rest. Kagen studied the pale alien, wondering at the chilly pride beneath the serene front. It was only after staring at the white armour for a few minutes that he noticed the oddly familiar characters stamped on the shoulder pad. It took a moment longer to place them; the same curved script that had been imprinted on Dorn's helmet, just under the Aurebesh markings.

"You're from Kamino aren't you?"

"Yes," Zea said neutrally. A bare flicker of acknowledgment passed between them.

"You can use the Force?" Kagen prompted, sure. The Kaminoan turned slowly back to him.

"Not well," he said, unsmiling and a faint mocking quality to his words.

Kagen waited, but it seemed he had nothing more to offer. After a moment, Yasue took pity on him, changing the subject.

"We will be able to reach the Rift tomorrow I hope, if any of the other Hunter Divisions found your companions. I can spare Tem to take you, even if Si'en and I are needed elsewhere. The shield over the dome can be breached from the inside, through the top-hatch," she added, not entirely reassuring. Zea flicked his gaze towards her.

"You cannot maintain a Force link if the boy is too far away."

"It will hold over four kilometres; we accounted for five Kouven, the most that would've been assigned to one unit." Yasue bit her lip, ignoring Kagen's startled glance.

"There are only two circumstances in which a full lockdown would have been implemented –"

"And we'd have noticed planetary bombardment," Tem put in, deeply pessimistic.

" – Which leaves a large force, more than a hundred units crossing the far Mid-gates; if anyone else from his ship survived, they're about to get caught in the middle of a war. A unit with more than two Kouven is rare in itself; I thought they might have been trying to break through this sector, hence sealing us inside one of the domes; if Vessel is involved..." She shook her head. "It'll be interesting.

"Kagen saw Vessel back at the Rift – the Ven's second in command –" she added for the aforementioned Padawan's benefit, " – so he's probably still around here somewhere. If the Force link fails, Si'en could restore it, she has a longer range than me –"

"What link?" Kagen interrupted, at his limit. Yasue blinked at him.

"You didn't notice? I was too slow to block the first Kouven to target you and it affected you badly, so I pretty much filtered them out entirely from that point on."

"I noticed – something – that was you?"

"Well you were struggling; another Jedi who came here had the same problem. 'The Force was unstable', was how she described it. You were correcting yourself already, but it was safer to keep the link in place; the older Kouven are more proficient." She frowned at him, clearly stuck for how best to explain. Struck with sudden inspiration, she rummaged in the folds of her sash, finally withdrawing the glass sphere she'd had back in the first dome.

"Try and pick it up with the Force," she said, setting it down triumphantly. Kagen glanced at it uncertainly; there was an avid gleam in her eyes and she looked fully awake again. Swallowing his unease, he stretched out his hand. It gave a funny sort of jump and started to roll towards him, but didn't lift of the floor. His Force grip on the sphere kept shifting, as though he was trying to pick up a globe of water instead of glass; he narrowed his attention and brought it unswervingly into his hand.

Yasue followed its movement, blankly surprised. The silence stretched out bizarrely; abruptly shattered when Tem let out a rough bark of laugher.

"He was supposed to drop it, then?" Yasue flushed, recalling the sphere with an absent flick.

"People usually do," she said. "It's ishiri; same mineral that's in all of the rock here, and it distorts the Force." Tem cocked an eyebrow, amusement still twisting his lips. Yasue turned her back on him.

"Because of its abundance here, it becomes difficult to feel the Force. Every sensation is amplified but made nonspecific at the same time, so a single person's presence becomes pretty difficult to distinguish more than a few metres away. Pure ishiri particularly – like that piece – isn't easy to get a grip on. It took me almost a day," she muttered, half-inwardly. Tem grinned over her shoulder, repacking the supplies.

"I see," Kagen said, not quite truthfully.

"It's good that you can do it already, some people find it harder to adjust their techniques." Yasue obviously intended it as a compliment, but her surprise mirrored his own confusion. There was no point in time that he could definitively remember the Force changing; perhaps somewhere between the two domes. It was still different and not at all gentle, but he could sense Yasue's presence easily enough. If he concentrated, the warped ripples around the ishiri globe – moving as she returned it to her sash – became apparent, tiny fluctuations in the Force that blurred everything else together.

"Who's Si'en?" he asked, for lack of anything else.

"She's an independent Hunter, unattached to any of the Divisions. She'll be outside somewhere. Oh; she's not a Sith either." The last was said a little doubtfully, but with polite finality. She stayed awake long enough to nod in vague approval of his cooperation, then settled back against the wall. Her eyes closed and she appeared to relax; Kagen could feel the quiet attentiveness that remained.


	6. Chapter 5

Star Wars: The Korasa Trial

_Chapter 5:_

'The shield over the dome can be breached from the inside, through the top-hatch', Yasue had said. She had said it with no discernible worry in her voice or expression, and the confident authority of having done so many times before. Looking between the vast wall below, and her plainly eager expression, Kagen was sure she had; but this did not make the ground seem any closer.

Exactly one hour and four standard minutes after the shield's activation, by Obee's count, communication was restored. Yasue had exchanged rapid-fire orders with the rest of her party; lent to another captain, while Tem translated for the Padawan's benefit. The Hunters were to cover the 301st to 014th sectors, including 'dead' sectors, and the Inner Divisions were being deployed over the remainder.

Tem had let the uncomprehending silence stand for a moment, before the vaguely hopeful expression fell. Sighing, he'd pulled out a datapad and sketched a large circle labelled 'Gaara'. A thick blacked out section – the Rift – covered the equator, with a dotted line bisecting each hemisphere. These were the Mid-Gates, near and far, then vertical lines were drawn in, dividing the moon into sectors. Technically, he'd drawn three, gotten bored and explained that they carried on all the way round, defining 504 sectors, each about 8 kilometres across at their widest. And some of those, dead-secs, were no-go zones, unless one had an enviro-suit because they had been vented and sealed at some point during the course of a 1st through to about the 130th battle of the said sector.

All of these battles had taken place in the Maintenance Level; although huge bulkheads defined the Mid-Gates on all levels, only the uppermost two had intermediate gates, all of which had been sealed for nearly two decades. The levels below – the 4th having never been completed, was considered as one in the same as the 5th – could be divided by the energy walls that activated during a full lockdown, or whenever a sector was compromised by an atmospheric leak or toxin. The shields ran the full length of the hemispheres, but also ran horizontally in intervals of just under 100 kilometres.

Local geography established, Yasue had led them under the interior dome, and its pulsing generator. The chamber seemed so much smaller, a dazzling blue shield veiling the machinery responsible for the outer energy field. It blazed a metre over Zea's head, impenetrable, but for the narrow service shaft that ran up inside the wall.

The Kaminoan made no complaint, despite the fact he was to be left behind; their intended means of escape were beyond him. He stood silently aside while Yasue detached one of the wall panels to reveal the shaft. Some instinct warned Kagen not to press any further, but the lieutenant hadn't bothered to conceal his presence in the Force. Bare threads of discontent encircled him, neither growing nor shrinking; but that composure slipped entirely when Tem, bringing up the rear, accidentally switched his comlink back on. Blaster fire rang out, accompanied by a strangled cry before he shut it off, but in that window, Kagen felt a wave of contempt breaking from the alien, an unanswerable bitterness, that had not been diminished by time.

Then the calm mirror slid back into place, the momentary distraction dismissed. Yasue's white-wrapped feet reappeared; for some reason the standard grey of her jumpsuit had been replaced from just above her ankles down.

"Keep in contact; if Vessel is still around here somewhere he might make a run up this sector and I don't want you to get killed Lieutenant."

"Tae-dana, Sir," Zea acknowledged the order in as neutral tone of voice as had ever been. He stared over the Padawan's head as he and Tem passed, the pulsating light of the shield reflected in his eyes.

The service tunnel was unlit, but it grew lighter as they climbed, the shield's incandescent generator beam finally coming into view, too bright to look at directly. The last few metres of the shaft were almost horizontal, but ceiling rose sharply nearer the centre; a greatly scaled-down replica of the chamber, except that the column of light ran from the floor up to the ceiling. A mostly transparent field contained the raw energy, looking almost like static in midair.

Yasue ignored it, pulling a panel from the ceiling to reach the firmly secured hatch that opened onto the dome's surface. A discordant beep sounded behind Kagen, and he hurriedly crawled into the space to let Obee drift past.

It was Tem who actually lifted the heavy trapdoor, bracing himself against the floor. Yasue slipped out of the tight opening, whitish light filtering in. Then the hatch was pulled ajar, Yasue backing carefully down the sloping dome, and Tem standing up to take most of the weight. She reappeared in the opening, a black silhouette against the brilliant shield.

"Climb through. Don't stand up." Kagen did so, feeling quite awed by his surroundings. At about his head-height, had he not been bent over, the energy beam hit a wide dish suspended from the cavernous ceiling above, dispersing into the hemispherical shield. It was purest white, painfully so at first, but faded to an electric shade of blue, far below.

The arc of the dome was broad enough to obscure the exact point at which it met the ground, the slope increasing to a straight drop before the end. Tem wore a suitably anxious expression, but Kagen could sense the reckless grin lurking unseen at Yasue's core. The top-hatch shut with a very final sounding boom, and then there was only one way left to go.

"The opening will only last about thirty seconds; slide down and jump. It's not as hard as it looks. I'll make sure you land safely." Kagen appreciated the effort, but Yasue's dubious encouragement might have been more reassuring left unsaid.

Heat radiated down from the dish, and the throbbing sound of the shield made it difficult to think. Yasue had placed a thin rod in one of the evenly spaced holes that ran around the generator beam, and held it gingerly in her prosthetic hand. In one smooth motion, she extended the pole, up into the shield itself. The shield split like water around the tip, but water had never made such a sound; a raw tearing that made Kagen's teeth rattle. He saw the sparks blossoming from beneath the plating on her arm, but the sound was drowned out entirely.

Already, the tip was glowing orange, tiny rivulets of molten metal running down the shaft, but solidifying before they reached the ground. Grey ceiling was visible through the widening slit; a finger's breadth where the rod had connected, but easily wide enough to escape through by the time it reached the dome's base.

Tem pushed off first, sliding along the smooth metal, followed by Yasue. Trying not to think too much, Kagen launched himself down the side. Obee floated alongside him, issuing a low _'wooo'_, before he lifted easily of the gap. The little droid glided away in a lazy spiral, but the Padawan paid him no mind. He was picking up speed very rapidly, pushing out with the Force on both sides to stay within the opening. The air was thinning too, rushing past too fast to breathe.

Ahead of him Tem began to fall in earnest, 10 metres from the ground. Yasue stood up and leapt; aided by the Force she moved almost too fast to follow. She landed neatly, a languid flick of her hand halting Tem's descent. Steadying himself, Kagen threw himself off the dome, his momentum carrying him further and higher than he had intended. He rolled on landing, expecting a moderate to severe amount of pain, but with another vague gesture, the young captain slowed him down as well.

She wasn't even looking at him, rubbing absently at the fresh burn marks on her armguard. Her face was hidden, but she moved sharply, every muscle still taut with the sheer exhilaration of their flight. Behind him, Kagen heard the smooth hum as the gap in the shield closed.

The lockdown was still in effect, glimmering domes visible through the sector barriers. These shields could not be broken as easily; compared to the dome shields, they were eerily quiet and more transparent, but the air seemed to shimmer as they approached. To demonstrate, Tem tossed the empty food packets at it. They didn't so much burn as they disintegrated, the dust vanishing before it could hit the floor.

Yasue set a slower pace this time, not running, but a speed they could maintain without tiring too much. Her limp returned within the hour; Kagen, ignoring the example set for him, had to ask.

"What?" she said distractedly, not bothering to turn around. "I'm not injured." She walked a little faster as if to prove it, falling into a practiced stride that was only a little lopsided. "Well, my arm's a little fried, but I can fix it later," she added, in concession to the mechanic limb, cradled against her chest. Tem drew level with the Padawan, and tapped his shoulder.

"Long story, involves a few large droids a long time ago; don't ask again or she'll knock you down and carry you for a few kilometres to show you that she can," he said quietly. Seeing Kagen's sceptical expression, he shrugged. "I can get away with asking because I know her, and I'm heavier than both of you."

They passed between the shadows of old construction droids, each stripped down to the metal bones. One retained a single photoreceptor, dangling on a thread of wire. It flashed once, when Obee went past, reflecting the green light and giving off a momentary illusion of autonomy.

The darkness around them seemed to be deepening; there were no more domes ahead, but Kagen could see the Rift. It was defined by the pinkish glow of blaster fire, and stars. The sound of the battle reached them a moment later, somehow different from the Padawan's previous experience. There were no voices, only the shrill noise of blaster weapons; a lone scream rent the air, lingering and strange.

Kagen drew in a slow breath, the Force brushing against him; he had drawn on it continuously, stretching the thin air to sustain him fully. With the harsh noise growing ever louder, it was becoming difficult to concentrate, and the air was only getting thinner. He wondered briefly how the others could stand it; until he saw Tem watching him, patiently holding out a breather to match the one in his mouth.

Feeling exceptionally foolish, Kagen took it. Yasue had disdained one for the moment, and was blithely ignoring the exasperation of the soldier behind. The energy shield came to an abrupt end, the upper levels terminating in a smooth wall, metres short of the battle-scarred verge below. They passed out of the massive shadow and looked over the edge of the platform to the vicious conflict in the depths.

Byaven, white-striped masks striking in the gloom, poured out a steady rain of fire, blaster rifles discharging until they were spent. When a weapon failed, it was thrown aside, another quickly acquired from the dead. They fell in droves, soundlessly, but replaced in moments. Hunters moved in the shadows, outnumbered ten to one, never faltering, weaving around the stinging red darts. Their painted faces took on a savage realism, the red designs seeming to shift in the rising smoke.

"This is the advance guard; at the worst we should have to hold for an hour before the Inner Divisions arrive. Tae-Heron should be coming down the 302nd sec, So-Bateru the 320th." Yasue spoke flatly, flexing the metal fingers of her left hand. Two didn't move. "Kagen, you can go hide if you want, but try not to die."

Tem swung the blaster rifle off his shoulder; he attached the barrel extension in a fluid motion, making the weapon longer than he was. Kneeling down, he dropped targets one by one with unhurried ease. There was another Hunter nestled beneath the overhang; his shots were less precise, but the bolts he fired off were as thick as the man's wrist, and sounded something akin to cannon fire. Assaulted for the 4th time in not as many days, Kagen's ears merely throbbed.

He saw Yasue step out into the air, dropping onto a twisted girder, avoiding the single shot that came her way, and moved instinctively aside. Two steaming holes appeared where he had been, and directly across the Rift, a yellow-masked clone lined up another shot. The Force surged around him, but then the man dropped, falling over the edge.

"Yeah, watch out for Amaven," Tem shouted, similar pockmarks drilled into the metal floor beside him. He was scanning the opposite platform, systematically shooting down the clone snipers. Swallowing back a stab of fear, Kagen opened himself to the Force, leaping down after Yasue. She was nearing the bottom, and deftly twisted the new power cell into her stun baton mid-jump.

Navigating the metal debris was treacherous, but Kagen saw each foothold clearly. For a moment he could lose himself in the dance, running down the near-vertical slope of a fallen piece of decking and flinging himself out towards another beam. Blaster fire pinged against the smooth surface, some shots ricocheting towards him; never connecting.

Beneath him, a clone reeled back from an invisible chop across his windpipe, before Yasue rolled over him, her restored baton slipping into the gap between his body armour and helmet. Two more fell down before Kagen landed, bright charge sinking into their chests. Then he was in the thick of it, his lightsaber humming as the green blade cleaved the ranks of Byaven.

He was fighting harder than he ever had in his life, and the weapon had never felt so balanced in his hand. Hunters fought beside him, some wielding lightsabers won from bested Kouven, and a green Twi'lek with a pink-flecked mask held a solitary blue blade. The noise was filtered out; there was only the Force, prompting him to strike, fall back and strike again.

Abruptly, there was no one left in his path, his peripheral vision littered with the dead. A wave of exhaustion swept his limbs, clouding his vision. There were others around him, locked in combat; one Kouven disengaged and sprang at him. Kagen brought his lightsaber up, catching the red blade. The man was strong, taller than the young Jedi, and swung again. His parry was sluggish, almost too slow, and Kagen was forced to step back to avoid the next.

"Kagen!" The cry carried the weight of the Force, distracting both combatants, and a man in bright white armour drilled a fist sized hole into the Kouven's chest with single burst from his blaster rifle. Behind him, Dahy waded through the clones, his lightsaber carving into them with brutal efficiency. The Jedi Knight's face was streaked with grime, an ugly welt on his forearm where his cloak and robes had been torn away.

They had been fighting for some time; blood covered the exact markings on the clone soldier's headgear, but his face was familiar and he spared the Padawan a wan salute as he blasted out a path for them. The Jedi followed, green blades working in tandem to reach the relative cover of a ruined transport.

"I hate this place," Dahy said brightly, deflecting a stray blaster bolt. Kagen nodded, his saber working with renewed energy. Great booming ion cannons began to sound overhead, and a battered freighter flashed over the Rift, so low to the station's surface that the lower laser canon had been shorn away. It was close enough that they saw the red stripes of the Republic's diplomatic craft, before it crashed over the rim of the far side and out of sight.


	7. Chapter 6

Star Wars: The Korasa Trial

_Chapter 6:_

The pilot was slumped forward, head resting on his out flung arms, but conscious. A hissing groan escaped him as he pushed himself slowly up, fumbling with the buckle of his harness. The Force warped through him, and his arms began to tremble. His passenger fared no better, staring ahead with eyes glazed over in horror.

"Come on Master Shan, surely you're used to that sort of landing by now," he quipped, his grin falling flat. Her grey eyes met his before sliding away, the hollow gesture fooling neither of them. He turned back to the sensor readouts.

"Air's pretty thin, we'll need breathers –"

"He's dead," she said flatly.

"We can't know that for sure, I know I saw at least one green blade down there; he's a tough kid…" he trailed off, shrinking a little from the paralyzing grief in the Force; she wasn't referring to the boy. He reached for the breathers, dropping one noisily. It stirred her, and she made an effort to collect herself.

"Come on," he said again, steadfastly ignoring the way her hand shook as he passed it to her.

***

There was a lull in the fighting after the ship's appearance, the ion cannons falling silent again. Hunters had looked up hopefully, expecting reinforcements. As there were none to be had, they carried on fighting, bare hints of desperation beginning to show through. But they fought hard, now calling encouragement between themselves. Kagen had dismissed it as his imagination, but the Byaven were indeed thinning out.

Nearby, Yasue was fighting a Kouven; one of the last still moving. At some point she'd accepted another mask – a mild-looking face etched in yellow and green – but the bloody streak across it still paid homage to its original owner. Somehow she was managing to block the red blade, despite its greater length and the closeness of the debris around her. Another Hunter was backed towards her, unaware of the danger as he blocked blaster fire with a thick-bladed saber. Her Force aspect changed, suddenly reckless, and with the next parry, she slid her baton down to touch against the saber's hilt.

As at the dome, the lightsaber overloaded violently, hot fragments of metal suspended by the Force. Yasue let them fall, stepping into the clone so close her masked forehead bumped against his chest plate. There was a flicker, and he dropped. Dahy frowned, plainly disturbed.

"That's an interesting power," he remarked, warily. The stun baton fizzled noisily, entirely spent.

"It's not really that interesting. The clones have very similar minds. Tae-Haya-mi," she said easily, raising her hand in a vague salute. He didn't look convinced, some of the energy draining away as his face reverted to its customary seriousness. It was strange; he had seemed so much younger, and less of a Jedi Knight than an equal when he had found the Padawan. A shred of relief remained, lightening his sharp blue eyes; but they were now rather foreboding.

"A captain at your age; you must be pretty strong," he pressed, indicating the two-coloured design on her mask.

"I'm no stronger than anyone else. I'm just better at killing stuff." There was no animosity towards the Jedi, but a flat, cool tone in her voice that suggested she was more concerned with the last few Byaven. He turned back to Kagen and his Force presence drew away from hers.

"There's another unit left – up there," Yasue pointed up at the Maintenance Level. Dahy followed her gaze discerning small movements in the gloom. "That's not a retreat pattern –"

"They're going after that ship." The Jedi Knight's voice was grim, and he broke into a run. Hunters melted out of his path, perhaps persuaded by the humming lightsaber he hadn't bothered to deactivate.

"Tae-Haya-mi," the green-skinned Twi'lik called out in protest.

"Ven reinforcements are less than an hour away, Heron, there's no time," she said over her shoulder. He raised his mask angrily, but spun on heel, open-mouthed as more ships screamed over the edge. Their sub-light engines were much smaller than the great drives necessary for interstellar travel; but they also lacked the more sophisticated shielding that helped to dampen the noise. One twisted down into the gorge beside them, a massive Togorian leaping out to land heavily among the debris.

The ship didn't land, but carried on along the Rift, warriors disembarking as it went. They were mostly human, unmasked and with very little armour; with the exception of the alien, they all wore long cloaks in white or grey, very similar to those favoured by the Jedi. The Togorian had a thick cylinder enveloped in his shaggy paw and it was only after the glaring yellow blade had activated that Kagen recognized it as a lightsaber. The hilt was the same thickness as his wrist, the blade scarcely thinner, and the few Ven in his path simply folded around it, armour notwithstanding.

A human followed, his navy blue cloak drawn in around him and the hood casting his face in shadow. Two gleaming lightsabers hung at his waist, momentarily revealed by the shifting folds, and a bright white insignia stood out on his right shoulder. The alien had the same symbol on his cloth-wrapped bandolier; the colours in reverse, and he stepped out of the other's path with unexpected grace.

Much like Yasue, the human's presence was visible in the Force and almost entirely closed off, but the sense of underlying power was much greater. The Hunter captain was facing away from him, but she had gone so very still. The clear blue-grey eyes passed over her, chill recognition stretching taut between them. Yasue seemed utterly startled; Kagen felt her relief when the man turned his attention to the other captain. Noticing the Padawan's attention, her sense drew violently away, and she joined the Togorian as he swept the area for hostiles.

The Twi'lek recovered faster, straightening his pink and blue mask.

"Third Division; Hunter Captain Heron," he reported, carefully respectful. He was much less guarded than either of the others and Kagen caught the slight resentment behind the calm front.

"Second-div Gotae-San: Lieutenant Sloan can remain here to support you, but I would appreciate Tae-Haya-mi's assistance in retrieving that freighter." There was a note of command in the reply, that Heron was clearly reluctant to challenge. The Twi'lek bowed his concession, lekku bobbing with the motion.

San nodded shortly, first to the other captain, then the Togorian who gave a muffled snarl of acknowledgement. Dahy shrugged his cloak back onto his shoulders, the singed fabric considerably less elegant; on closer inspection, San's was also imperfect, but the wear had been carefully repaired. He had yet to lower his hood, but a few strands of dark hair had fallen across his pale face.

"Jedi aid is also welcome," San said formally. "The ship landed in the 318th sector, which is right in the middle of where the Ven are advancing; the first 300 sectors are completely quiet, as are the 400th onwards." His voice was slightly raised for the benefit of the nearest Hunters, but very even and controlled; his composure could have rivalled that of any of the Jedi Masters of Kagen's acquaintance, yet he didn't seem all that much older than Yasue.

"How many units?" Yasue asked.

"So far, more than two hundred, and they're still coming through; he's sending everything he has. We haven't got much time before the next wave." She hissed quietly, glancing up at the rough edge of the Rift. The surrounding Hunters made no comment, but the atmosphere had turned very serious, and they moved quickly out of the way of the rescue party. Dorn saluted once, following Dahy's order to assist the masked warriors. The Jedi Knight seemed disinclined to explain their meeting; only that Esk had died in the first attack.

The far side of the Rift was less steep and Kagen flung himself up the slope without really thinking. Blood pounded in his ears, mercifully drowning out the short bursts of blaster fire that had resumed; there were no Ven left fighting, but the injured were being systematically eliminated. Unfortunately there was no stifling the sense of death in the Force. The clones had left a blurred presence; a violent purpose that shrunk with each fresh volley. Yasue paused a few steps ahead. Kagen hadn't meant to pry after she'd pulled away, but once again, he felt her decision not to intervene almost as clearly as if he'd made it himself. An ouken might save them a little suffering, but was too taxing to allow with the rest of the Ven convening upon them.

Dahy was still questioning the two captains, displaying faster acclimatization than seemed logical.

"Even if they breached the Mid-Gates, lifting them all would be –"

"Pretty impossible, so long as OAI remains operational," Yasue said, strangely impassive.

"He's opened them, Darteru'. All of them; the system was broken two hours ago. The evacuations will start in less than an hour," Dahy swore quietly, staring at the back of San's head. Yasue was less surprised, and simply sped up a little.

"So he really is serious this time, you picked an interesting time to come back, Jedi-da." She directed her attention back to the Jedi Knight; it wasn't an accusation as such, but there was an odd curiosity in the way she said it.

"We've been busy," Dahy returned, catching his breath as their path became more vertical.

"So have we; there's been more Kouven than ever running around and they're moving independently. One tracked us and probably would have killed your apprentice there if the shields hadn't activated."

"He's not my apprentice, but I appreciate it all the same. Is there anyone else important involved?"

"Only Vessel so far, but he disappeared again after blowing up the platform."

"_Sou demera_, right?" There was a dry irony to his speech that grated on the Padawan. Yasue answered in the same language, turning a neat flip through the air to land on an outcrop some three metres higher.

"You've been here before," Kagen said, dismayed. Reflexively, he caught the next handhold, and pulled himself up, but couldn't take his eyes off the Jedi Knight. Dahy paused, looking down to meet his accusing stare.

"I promise you I haven't," he said bluntly, jerking his head towards the top. "I think that ship should be your concern at the moment. It won't matter who's on it; Byaven aren't very hospitable." Kagen swallowed back the multitude of questions he wanted to ask, trying not to feel betrayed. Doubt gnawed at him, but the Jedi training he had so painstakingly engraved into his being at last began to assert itself. There would be time for mistrust later, and after a steadying breath, he climbed after them.

Yasue's lips twitched into a small smile behind her mask, and she waited for him to catch up. The mild approval was unexpected but welcome. The final stages of their ascent were delicate, running at the sheer faces of rock, using the Force to sustain momentum until a ledge wide enough to stand on was reached. Twice, Kagen slipped down, digging his fingers painfully into tiny cracks to hold his weight. Despite his much greater weight, footholds shifting unpredictably, Dahy reached the top without stumbling once.

There was a shimmering wall of energy blocking their entry, dangerously close to invisible – the sector shields on this side ran up to and along the edge. Yasue thumbed a button on her comlink, looking back across the Rift. A faint movement drew Kagen's eye; Obee was drifting lazily across the gap. He was startlingly quick, for all his apparent disinterest, beeping a definite negative at Yasue as he hovered in front of the shield.

"Sticks are no use," she said cryptically. Noticing the two Jedi's incomprehension, Yasue flushed, swinging her mask halfway around. "Solder rods; used to measure disproportion in – or disrupt – the dome shields. This one would melt them in a second, and Obee doesn't have official authorization to open them," she added, as San regarded the droid. He didn't reply, but detached a narrow datachip from his belt. The droid made a strangled whine, swivelling between the two humans.

Yasue blinked, but took the offered chip, and beckoned Obee down to her height. He hesitated, but ran a blue-coloured scanning light over it; then Yasue yanked him towards her with an impatient application of the Force. Obee opened his dataport obediently, but kept up a dull electrical muttering. The download only took a moment, and the beeping became much more interested; when the completion tone sounded, the droid approached the wall sensors at speed, trilling out the acquired codes.

"I'll remove the access authority from him later, thank you," Yasue said flatly.

"You're a Second Division captain; the authority is yours as well. I didn't think you would have removed those codes in the first place." San glanced up as the energy shield flickered and died, his expression unchanged.

"It seemed appropriate." Yasue whistled at Obee and stepped under the threshold.

"Those pillars are turbolifts, take your pick of whichever looks closer." Obee took the initiative, gliding away into the dark. The ceiling was much lower and only a few domes shone in the distance, framed by the next dividing shield. Supporting columns were spaced evenly around a host of important looking pipes carrying vital substances between the levels.

Bobbing in smug satisfaction, Obee made a pointed series of beeps, opening the lift door. It was easily big enough to fit a dozen people, but the lack of opposition was disquieting. The lift rose silently, the screen counting down until it stopped on the second level. Obee wailed in displeasure, drifting back to let Yasue enter a short code into the keypad. The floor vibrated once as the carriage began to move again.

Grey light filtered in through the transparisteel panels as the doors reopened. A single corridor, walls and ceiling one continuous curve, ran in two directions. A dome rose up, half a kilometre away, and other translucent passageways traced over the vast surface of the station. Out of the shadow of the Rift, the sky was quite pretty, a pearly blue-grey colour uninterrupted by cloud.

"There's the ship," Kagen said, moving forward as he reached for the breather still hanging around his neck. Yasue put a restraining hand on his shoulder, steering him into the recessed doorway that led to the exterior. The ship was a rather boxy freighter, unfamiliar, and the red markings painted across it uneven and fresh. As the door seal hissed, the boarding ramp lowered, a tall figure stepping out.

Recognition was fleeting, before the Force surged in formless warning. Blaster fire ripped into the wall behind them, Byaven and a silver-masked elite appearing at the bend in the corridor, flanked by a Kouven. Dahy swore loudly, catching a few bolts on his lightsaber, but not before one scored a glistening line over his thigh.

He stumbled, green blade hovering defensively, but pain was making him clumsy. Kagen leapt to cover him; Yasue was faster. She descended among the clones in a heartbeat, red blade flashing. The speed had cost her, and she favoured her right leg heavily, but they were already down. The Kouven blocked one swift blow, collapsing under the second.

Stray blaster bolts ricocheted off the transparisteel, leaving thick black streaks. Kagen found himself beside Yasue, with no memory of moving, watching her turn to face the clones pouring out of the lift. Her eyes widened, right foot dragging, but the row of clones was bisected from behind. A falling blaster went off, the ceiling shattering in a thousand glittering pieces. Yellow eyes gleamed from beneath a heavy scarf, vicious delight rippling through the Force.

He came back to himself a moment later, disorientated by the sudden vision. But there she was a little way down the corridor, moving with the same slowness, and surprise softening her face. Transparisteel shattered, the countless shards hanging in a shimmering cloud impervious to the pressurised air flowing out. An alarm sounded, clones pouring out of the lift to surround the still figure in vortex's centre.

A woman, swathed in dark cloth and veiled stood with her arms outstretched, shining fragments resting on her. Her lightsaber deactivated, the red light fading as the hilt dropped down. Byaven raised their weapons, but never fired. The screen of broken transparisteel vanished, replaced with pinkish mist. Clones let their weapons fall, eyes hidden, but their heads angled down to stare at the livid threads of blood tracing over their armour.

Strangely, her eyes were hidden beneath the purplish scarf, only the cruelly twisted lips were visible. Raising one arm delicately, she wrenched the lift door from its socked, plugging the splintering hole in the ceiling. Fragments dropped to the floor, stained red and the Force rose in sickening waves. Dahy shuddered; it was all he could do not to collapse, blood running down his leg in a warm stream.

San had gone the other way; his whitish blade flashing between the Ven emerging from another lift on the far side of the corridor's arc. Kagen watched for a moment, bemused. He had covered the ground so quickly, so far around that the sounds of his battle faded before they could reach them. The Force surged as the tall captain raised his hand and brought it sharply down again; the remaining Byaven all staggered under the motion, falling flat. A silver-masked Araven fired uselessly as he dispatched them, the lightsaber's blade barely seeming to move.

Kagen's stomach wrenched as he forced his attention back to the grim figure surrounded by glass. But the woman ignored them, barely inclining her head towards Yasue. She spoke quietly, a smooth, rolling accent that would have been pleasant, but for the contained lighting that coloured her words. She was of the dark side, so very clearly, and the Padawan watched blankly as Yasue nodded in return.

"I hate these things," Yasue was saying, retrieving a battered lightsaber from one of the Kouven, but then she stiffened suddenly, glancing back towards the Jedi then the ship.

"Si'en!" The older woman swept her hand back, sliding the crumpled door away from the hole long enough for Yasue to dart through. She sped across the platform, activating the red saber as she threw herself between the single Kouven and the figure from the ship. A Force push knocked him out of the way, an orange lightsaber spiralling out of his grip, and she caught the worst of the following lightning in her hand.

The Kouven tried to pass her as another figure staggered down the ramp. Kagen saw the other woman stumbling back; Yasue was still between them, the red blade shimmering through the air. It caught the clone across his chest, clipping his chin, and the black mask fell. The woman drew away; mouthing in soundless horror, then tore her hand towards the Captain, the Force horribly tainted. But that was his Master, her face drawn and ghastly; and Yasue, terribly off guard, was thrown aside, bouncing off the ship's unforgiving wall.

Bastila Shan fell to her knees, the long hilt of her lightsaber rolling away unnoticed, her eyes fixed on the Kouven's blank face.

**A/N - apart from chapters 2 and 3 merging to make more sense, this is the first chapter with a significant change from the original; that being my OC, San coming in earlier. I really needed him in the next chapter and this seemed the best way to do it. Anyway; big plot reveal here, and a free bar of internet chocy to anyone who's figured it out before now. I hope you enjoy it; this was a fun chapter to write...I've been looking forward to writing Si'en since day one.**


	8. Chapter 7

Star Wars: The Korasa Trial

_Chapter 7:_

Dustil Onasi rolled to his feet, surprisingly unhurt. One hand fell across his lightsaber hilt, though he couldn't see the dropped breather; he could however, taste the lightning that he knew he had heard. Bastila was on her knees between two prone figures, her face made quite dreadful by the terrible anguish that was reflected everywhere in the Force. Her eyes were riveted on the face of the taller body, but he couldn't make it out from the angle he was standing at.

"Oh Force," he muttered, low, as he moved closer. It was the same face; impossibly younger, and without the lopsided burn scar, but even as he reached Bastila's side, more of the masked men convened on the ship. Bile rose in his throat as the Force twisted revoltingly. There were two of the black-robed men, grey armour showing underneath and their hands resting on the lightsabers at their waists; three each, but the weapons were identical and crude. They were flanked by stockier soldiers; mostly white, but some of the stabiliser masks with silver markings overtop the black.

One of the first men gestured to him, the other stooping to collect the long hilt that was Bastila's weapon. Slowly, Dustil extended his hand, his lightsaber resting on the upturned palm; the black mask moved as the man tracked its progress, summoning the metal cylinder across the last few metres. He hung it on his belt with the others and stood to attention, mirroring the actions of his counterpart. Everything was the same, the leanly muscled frame and dark hair; without looking at the body below, Dustil knew that the face behind the masks would match it, and the face he hadn't seen since Korriban.

"Get her up." Dustil winced at the familiar tone; serious but reassuringly solid. Bastila looked up at the sound, her expression torn between confused hope and loss, but dismay won out as she caught sight of the other still form. Half standing, she glanced between the surrounding soldiers, blind panic threatening to drop her back down again.

"Not her; the other one," the robed man said harshly, ignoring the stricken Jedi Master. Dustil held her elbow until she could steady herself, hoping she would recover before they decided he was disobeying them. But within a minute, her breathing slowed down, and her gaze settled on the young woman crumbled next to the ship. He vaguely felt the walls that Bastila was forming around herself; roughly suppressing the pain she didn't have time to resolve fully, but there was anxious guilt mixed in. Aware of the cold gaze on him, Dustil set her on her feet and approached the girl, hands spread wide in compliance.

She was older than he'd first assumed because of her height, and surprisingly heavy. She was unconscious, a small scar of two parallel lines just below her right eye, fractionally longer than they were close together, and very pale. Dustil frowned, the memory patchy, but someone had shoved him aside before the lighting came. The slight rawness of her palm was nothing compared to the sickly burnt smell he remembered from his time at the Sith Academy; but the paleness seemed to be due to more than lighting or natural coloration alone.

A thin trail of blood spilled down the other side of her face, a purpling bruise becoming visible as he turned her over. The remains of a white mask remained on the metal deck, half- crushed, and blood mixing with the powdery fragments. There was a similar stain on the _Galmod's_ hull; pinkish, against the red-painted metal, and surely higher up than the girl could have possibly reached; Bastila's eyes slid across it, then quickly away again.

"_Naa_, Jedi-dana, that was unkind of you." A young man, startlingly pretty with long straight hair that matched his black eyes and robes, ambled between the assembled soldiers. Delicately reproachful, he stopped just before the Jedi Master, smiling blandly.

"She was just trying to protect you from my Kouven," he continued, nodding past her at the girl in Dustil's arms.

"I didn't mean –" Bastila's voice shook, fragile calm wavering. The man grinned pleasantly, taking a long step around her.

"Ah well, you didn't kill her; a shame about my clone, but then I can replace him easily." He nudged the body with his foot and sighed. "Seven-dee, take her; Tae-San, that's close enough please." With a single, languid motion, he brought the tip of his red saber to just touch against the girl's neck, a few strands of hair sizzling into dust, and the armour jumpsuit shining wetly beneath the blade.

Facing him was another man; younger, the hood of his robe blown back to reveal a cold face framed by dark hair drawn back in a severe ponytail. His lightsaber – a much softer shade of red – hummed quietly, giving a pink cast to the other's exposed throat.

"It's _Gotae_ now, Saru-da," he said neutrally, ignoring the Kouven behind him. Equally dispassionate, the clone bent his head to Bastila's height, offering a gloved hand. She had spun around as the blades ignited, indecision now clouding her features. Dustil didn't dare move; tiny beads of molten weave were rolling away from the point of the lightsaber.

"Saru died with his brother." The older man's carefully crafted disdain had faltered, hot anger rising at the bait. His knuckles whitened around the narrow hilt, and for a moment the overly sweet face seemed to shift.

"I beg your pardon, Vessel," the other said easily, gaze shifting to look past him. Dustil couldn't turn to see, but he heard the footsteps; rapid at first, slowing to a cautiously reasonable pace as they drew near. Vessel smiled again, his eyes still hard, the lightsaber drawing a tiny line over the thick fabric.

"They made you a senior captain? You, who won't even try to save an ally?" He withdrew the blade, giving him a clear view of the girl. There was a startled intake of breath somewhere behind Dustil; the presence was naggingly familiar, but it kept shifting free of his grip.

"There's no need to save her; you're currently outnumbered," San pointed out midly.

"Huh, so cold. How disappointing. Oi, Five, do you want to try anything more interesting?" he asked lazily, glancing back over his shoulder. A woman responded sharply, foreign words hissing between clenched teeth, but strangely delighted with the prospect of impending violence. Vessel's grin widened, a cruel gleam coming into his eyes as the Kouven beside him gently tugged Bastila to stand beside him.

"You can have the Jedi if you want them – if they want to go with you that is – but I think I'll keep miss Eight; it could be fun." At this the woman behind them let out a derisive snarl.

"Keep her then. Your master's interest in her is for her own abilities, not as a template. He's wasting his time, but he won't let you kill her." San's grey-tinged eyes were purely indifferent, and he held his lightsaber steadily. Vessel began to laugh, but the expression froze in place as a ghastly shiver resounded through the Force.

The armoured men dropped, the last Kouven still holding Bastila's hand, but Vessel danced aside from both the pink blade and the lightning-wreathed hand that clawed towards him. Theoretical safety was clearly enough for the alien woman; she'd done something to simply splinter the soldiers' minds, and bulled between them as they fell. She set up a bloodthirsty yowl, fingers curling viciously around twin handfuls of brilliant energy. Dustil staggered under the girl's weight, stray tongues of lightning flickering towards him. They fell short as he regained his balance, but the air still reeked of the naked, malevolent power, and the sudden pain and death in the Force was overpowering.

"Charming woman," Vessel remarked, stepping smoothly out of reach; and there was something smug in his expression as he turned back towards the rift. San's eyes widened but he didn't take the futile steps towards the edge. A moment later, the explosions started; great plumes of smoke converging along the gorge from both directions. They drowned out Bastila's pathetic cry as she wrenched her hand out of the Kouven's death grip, and the veiled woman's shuddering laugh; her thin frame shook beneath the wine-coloured robes, and she charged after the man, pointed teeth bared in a feral grin.

The pair of them disappeared over the lip, smoke spirally up with an ear-splitting blast that seemed to set the very air trembling. Both Jedi would have fallen, but San caught Bastila's arm, and a red-skinned hand steadied Dustil from behind. Kagen stepped around in front of him, pointing animatedly at the ship. The Padawan's face was taut, but strangely confident, despite the harshness in the Force.

Dahy came limping across the stark plating, trouser leg stained dark above his tall boots. The ship itself offered only a little refuge; the shattering explosions had stopped, but the smoke followed them up the ramp. Dustil laid the injured girl out in the medbay as gently as he could manage and hurried back into the main corridor. The ship's medical droid squawked at him indignantly, cut off only when the door slid shut. Lurching slightly as the ship took off, the would-be pilot his access to the cockpit barred.

Kagen was in his way, blathering about some droid that was taking them back across a rift; but that was unfair. Resisting the urge to swear, Dustil drew in a slow breath, letting the air hiss away between his tightly clamped jaws.

"Obee has the codes to get the ion cannons to hold off, but he'll land the ship as soon as we're across. Everyone else is in the main hold, but Dahy's injured; he wants to explain everything first." Relaxing his taut shoulders, Dustil followed him back, the boy's efforts to be reassuring washing over him with no real effect.

They were all seated around the circular table, Dahy sagging a little in the sparingly padded chair; except San who stood in the corner, talking into his comlink with quiet urgency. The Jedi Knight had clapped a medpac across the blaster wound, and seeping red glistened at the edges of the bandage. But it was Bastila who looked truly wretched, haunted and her free hand moving convulsively back towards her wrist where the Kouven had held it.

"They cloned him," she said faintly, not to anyone in particular. Glimmering tracks appeared on her face as tears leaked out from under her closed eyes. The tight bun she had adopted since being invited onto the Council had come undone, the stiff coils unwinding slowly down her back. Dahy glanced towards her, rough sympathy rather out of place on his stern features. He gave her a moment longer, an exasperated snort escaping as she composed herself; the display of self-control took an impressively short few moments, though her grey eyes remained affected.

"Revan disappeared for more than a year before his campaign against the Jedi; we now know that he came here, following the records of the 'Korasa Trial', buried somewhere in the archives." His voice seemed to echo in the enclosed space, ringing against Dustil's ears.

"The project itself was much older and the original date of its conception is unknown. But three Jedi, and their Padawans, backed by the Council of the time came to Kamino intending to research the possibility of cloning Force-sensitives. They set up on Gaara, hidden in some part by the ishiri concentration in the rock, but the project was renamed. Korasa is the largest moon; almost uninhabited, but the trials went very badly and the Council decided to cover everything up. One of the Jedi killed the others and one of the Padawans; Master Arcanys. He used their genetics as templates, successfully cloning an army of Force-capable soldiers which he fully intended to use.

"The Kaminoans themselves supported the project for several years more, building Synegral Station as you see it now, but eventually they were forced to withdraw. Because of their planet's unstable climate, destroying the station would be impossible; the resulting change in tides could have swamped their cities. Simply poisoning the air was another solution, but would only destroy the current batch of clones. The station had been built to be self-sufficient, and so long as Arcanys survived, he could vent the air and start again. They activated the moon's shielding, centred in the upper hemisphere, to contain and conceal the damage." Dahy paused, stilling the nervous twitch in his leg.

"The remaining Padawans and several other Jedi decided to return to Gaara to defend the shield generators, sealing the middle gates and bulkheads. Over time the clone genetics deteriorated until their sensitivity was lost completely, and the Council sent a task force of Jedi to eliminate Arcanys.

"They were slaughtered, and with new clone sources he breached the Mid-Gates, only stopped when Padawan Ma'San did vent the entire lower hemisphere, and the compromised sectors. It's doubtful that any of the strike team survived that first encounter, but if there were survivors, they were lost then. Things were quiet for a while, but the Ven did recover: in the meantime, the official Jedi involvement had shrunk down to a single sentry on the planet who knew what was under the shield. That position eventually disappeared - then Revan found the records." Bastila's face tightened again, but she did not look away. The atmosphere was grim, Kagen keeping a strained neutrality in his expression, but Dustil felt less obliged to stay silent.

"And the Republic didn't do anything, across all the time this was happening?" Dahy met his gaze, blue eyes turned quite remote.

"The Republic never knew and still doesn't," he said bluntly. San took an empty seat, his dispassionate self-assurance uniquely unforced.

"Why not?_" _ Dustil's tone was icy and he was holding himself very still. The ship's landing struts extended, the whirring mechanics grating conspicuously.

"Both the Republic and the Jedi were still fighting the Sith, and the lure of such an army might have overcome their reluctance to let Arcanys loose on the galaxy." Dahy matched his coldness, continuing over the pilot's half-spoken objections. "The decision was left to each of caretakers; the Council had long-since forgotten the danger he posed. Revan was defeated: _easily_, but Arcanys spared him and let him go again. He'd cloned him a thousand times over in the meantime–"

"And Bastila, you _knew_ about this?" His incredulous challenge was met with empty air. At some point in the landing cycle, the Jedi Master had slipped away.

***

The door to the medbay was closed; it was as battered as any on the borrowed freighter, and the designating stripes of white were peeling away. Bastila leaned back against the wall, just beyond the sensor's reach, reminding herself yet again loosen the grip on her wrist. It had been bad enough aboard the Star Forge, his remorse as he killed each of the captive Jedi resounding in the back of her consciousness. They were all but shells, ravaged and drained by Malak, but it had been left to Revan to sever the last, pitiful shreds of their existence.

She had felt his indecision then, trickling down the conduit in the Force that was their bond; his death, the Kouven's deaths, cut a bloody swathe through very being. She could see them in her mind's eye; livid black threads that surrounded her in choking coils, biting, _raw_. Her breath turned short and choppy, and she stumbled forward without registering the jolting hiss of the door sliding into its housing.

The woman inside was staring up at the ceiling, armour stripped away from her torso as the medical droid bound her left shoulder. The lights were reflected in the metal plating of the prosthetic limb; softly blurred to Bastila's eyes. A smaller bandage had been applied to her face, smooth against the pale skin, but her sense was quiet.

"I thought Jedi were supposed to avoid that sort of attachment," she said, turning her head gently to meet the damp grey eyes. Bastila would have flinched away from the diffident calm, but the haze of emotion around her seemed to wane. The Force was stemming from this woman, serene and somehow cold, but gradually driving the wrenching pain down.

"Yes, they are," Bastila managed through her mortification. She had lashed out, unthinkingly – unable to think – in the dreadful wake of the first Kouven's death, but the woman's voice was merely curious. She considered this, absently flexing the metallic fingers.

"Members of the Divisions are allowed to marry, but we're raised to be less afraid of losing people."

"The Jedi aren't afraid; we value all life and forgo such individual connections so we can protect people equally." Bastila spoke hotly, the protest familiar and comfortable, but all the moisture in her mouth had leached away. The lack of resentment was confusing; the woman clearly knew who had thrown her against the ship, but was indifferent –

"Master?" Bastila started guiltily, moving aside to admit her Padawan. He met her eyes questioningly; they were kind and reassuring, but so much older than she remembered. It was too late to conceal her spent composure, and there was a vague, cautionary notion that fluttered at the back of her mind; she was meant to resolve her emotions, not hide them, but Kagen did not press her.

"How are you, Yasue?" he said instead, quietly addressing the younger woman.

"I'll be alright," Yasue said; she would have surely shrugged if she had been standing. "My shoulder was dislocated, but nothing broke. I don't suppose you brought that mask? _Ma_, it's traditional to bring them back, but I can probably retrieve it later. What happened to Si'en?"

"She went after Vessel; the whole Rift exploded." Her eyes widened fractionally, a queer shade that wasn't quite blue or green, and she made a small hissing noise under her breath.

"That's bad, I need to get my orders." She sat up sharply, sliding off the cot with only a bare shadow of pain crossing her face. The medical droid made after her, an elaborate beeping reprimand ringing out in the small space. Kagen looked after her, exasperation twitching down his patterned lekku.

"Are you alright, Master?" he said a little crossly, turning back to Bastila. She met his eyes, struck, once again by how much they'd changed, and found she couldn't answer.

**A/N - Oh yeah, I don't own Star Wars; I'm just borrowing the setting and some of the KotOR characters with every intention of giving them back again. These last two chapters have been my first attempt at portraing canon characters, so I'd love to know what people think of that and the developing plot. Thanks to everyone who's stuck with the story so far.**


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